We have a bunch of EDI maps currently in Gentran that we would like to migrate to WM 6 eventually. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that WM will provide a mapping tool to help convert from Gentran, but is that available already?? Has anyone else heard of the same thing??
Maybe I saw it in brochureware or some random presentation…
webMethods has packages that you can download that correspond to the specific Application and Version. For example, if you are using ANSI X12 version 4010, then download the X12 4010 package. They also support VICs and some other (can’t remember.) v4.6 is slightly different than v6.+. 6.0 has some redeeming qualities about it that make the setup much easier to manage but does so through a web interface much like WmJDBC. In 4.6 you have to use getTemplate and for a novice, it can be very confusing (still confusing for me sometimes) trying to determine which documents are loaded. Since the templates are large and usually are in-memory, you want to load only the ones that you require.
HTH
Ray
webMethods is about to offer a map conversion tool from Gentran Mainframe to wm 6.01. Tool is developed by Satym but will be sold by webMethods and possibly be available to their professional services folks only. I saw the tool this year at IW 2003 and it was not yet completed. They claim it has an 80% conversion rate.
I had questions like what about the other 20%?
How does it inform you of that, do you have to hunt thru the original map to find what’s missing.
I’m always skeptical of code generators and conversion tools. My experience has been that by the time I debug the converted code it would have been faster to develop it from scratch.
Also I thing Gentran Server UNIX would have been a bigger market to go after.
my 2c,
ah hmm canuck loonie.
I have to agree with Chris, as my experience has been the same in the past. I also have to agree, Gentran Server UNIX would have been much more viable for us as well, since we migrated off of the mainframe before Y2k.
To pin point this migration problem, you might want to look into other “Platform Independence” data transformation tool available to give you portability across multiple EAI vendors’ platform.